Monday, July 13, 2026

M83 - Beauties Can Die


From their 2003 second album Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, which I'm not sure I had ever listened to before, despite my obsession with this band starting with Saturdays = Youth and culminating on the follow-up Hurry Up, We're Dreaming. Great record, but it takes a little getting used to. You can steam the entire thing "Officially" on their YouTube page HERE (or just any of the streamers).




Read:

Last week I picked back up on the re-read of Terry Moore's Rachel Rising that I started on New Year's Eve, 2025. I don't know how I got away from it for so long, because although I'd left off on issue 15, I re-read the entire rest of the forty-two-issue series in about a day and a half. 


I read this monthly, so while I have all the floppies, there are seven trade volumes collecting the full series and a recently released omnibus. This one is so worth your time. I mean, I think this is, in my humble opinion, the greatest Horror comic of all time. It's that good, and it's all down to Terry Moore's insanely relatable style and, the flip side to that coin, his absolutely nefarious approach to Horror. There are some insanely dark and disturbing themes, images and ideas in this book, but they never feel like they've gone too far. The overall story starts small and becomes brilliantly biblical, and those are two "B" words that usually do not go together in Shawn's world. 


The characters are fantastic and, again, so likable and relatable. Anyone who's read Moore's seminal Strangers in Paradise knows how great his characters are and make no mistake, Rachel, Jet, Zoe, Aunt Johnnie and Earl all feel like one fucked up branch of my interior family now, and I'm having a hard time letting them go. 




Playlist:


Bauhaus - Gotham (Live)
Mastodon - Emperor of Sand
Bauhaus - Go Away White
The Dillinger Escape Plan - One of Us is the Killer
3Teeth - Eponymous
M83 - Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts
High on Fire - Electric Messiah
Russian Circles - Gnosis
Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will
Chicago - 25 or 6 to 4 (single)
Melvins/Helms Alee - Controlling Data for a Better Feeling Future
M83 - Saturdays = Youth
Pinebender - Working Nine to Wolf
Plague Bringer - As the Ghosts Collect, the Corpses Rest




Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.


• Queen of Pentacles
• Six of Cups
* Ten of Pentacles

Emotion makes it difficult to rule the Earthly matters. A direct reference to spending money frivilously, of which, I have recently been guilty of. On a good path now, but have some make up work to do. 

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